Roger L’Estrange, les Français et la presse : traductions et propagande anglicane, 1678-1681

Abstract

This article explores some French translations of works by the immensely prolific English journalist, pamphleteer and censor, Roger L’Estrange (1616-1704) together with a translation he made himself. First, the article analyses the French versions of his Narrative of the Plot (1678), translated as Histoire de la Conspiration d’Angleterre (1679), and The Dissenter’s Sayings (1681), rendered as Le Non-Conformiste anglois dans ses Ecris, dans ses Sentiments, & dans sa Pratique (1683). We will show how these two pieces of propaganda, originally meant to support the Stuart regime and the Anglican Church against the English religious dissenters, were modified to suit a French readership, especially the French Huguenots exiled in London. Second, we will investigate L’Estrange’s own translation of an anonymous French work, Apologie pour les Protestans, published in 1681, and will focus on L’Estrange’s abreviations of the original that present a biased and erroneous image of French protestantism in England. In both cases, we will pay close attention to the way controversial literature was translated and the extent to which some translators were misguided as to the nature of both French and English protestantism.

Keywords

• Anglican Church
• dissenters
• Huguenots
• propaganda
• protestantism
• Roger L’Estrange